Thursday 27th May I attended my first DAIN drop-in session at the Chase Neighbourhood Centre in St. Ann’s. My fellow DA Tony has been working there a while, on Tuesday mornings; this was the first on Thursday afternoons and the first where he was accompanied by another DA, namely me.

In the event not a lot happened. Tony said a lot more people were coming to the Tuesday morning session, and reckoned it was because they had got to know about it, and that the lack of attendance on that Thursday afternoon was because people didn’t know there would be someone there to help them. I had a chat to a couple of people who did turn up; I also had a quick word with the manager of the whole Centre and one of his volunteers. I will go again but I think it would be more profitable if more people came (which would require some publicity and rustling up interest) and if there was something specifically for me to do (there wasn’t).

It’s a great little community centre, and is obviously much used by local people, but there needs to be more structure to the provision of computing help by volunteers such as us if we are to do any useful work there. Rather than just having us turn up I think it would be better if some sort of organised programme of drop-in sessions was arranged where people who really had burning issues and problems would know to turn up.